When I thought about a habit that I would just LOVE everyone to have, my mind went immediately to KINDNESS.

Just imagine, what would your day be like if you had, say 50% more simple kindness in your life. Even 10% more kindness would have a tremendous impact, right?

Small acts of kindness are so powerful. You know this.

From a door held open, to a smile – one of those eyes connecting smiles with a stranger, to a deep unexpected hug for a child who needs one (and who doesn’t?) to a phone call to an elder to just say “hi.”

There are as many examples as there are moments.

Here’s some fascinating information on the power of kindness and its impact on our immune system.

So…after thinking that kindness would be a pretty great habit for folks to have, I wondered how to get that to happen. How do you get people to be kind? Not too easy.

Then my favorite quote popped into to my head – Be the change you wish to see in the world. Mahatma Gandhi. What a profound human being!

Be the change. Be kind, more kind, deliberately kind, consciously kind. Simply kind. And since I’m passionate about creating powerful success habits, the next thought was expected.

How about I create an opportunity for 1000 people to join forces and commit to 21 days of kindness? If 1000 of us commit to BEing the change in our own worlds, how powerful will that be? With 1000 acts of kindness, how many people can we impact? And how many people can they then impact? Because, you do know kindness is contagious, right?

Just imagine the impact of this contagious behavior on a family unit, then on a neighborhood. Extend that vision to a town or a spiritual community – a church family for instance. We can have tremendous impact on the world with simple acts of kindness.

From a perspective of kindness, we will develop the mindset of cooperation, creative problem solving and love of diversity. We will be more equipped for the challenges we face.

Social networks are ideally suited to this program.

So let’s begin our 21 Days of Kindness. Just sign on. If you’re a member of Facebook join the group/event. If not, just leave a comment here, so we can keep count of our efforts. 100 participants is the goal.

No rules and no real guidelines…just be kind at least once a day to somebody. Feel free to send messages, post pictures, videos and links to enhance our experience at the group page. Discussions would be wonderful to motivate and inspire each other.

The single most important commitment though is to do something kind for somebody each and every day for 21 days straight. At the end of 21 days you will have a powerful, life changing, world impacting new or improved habit to pass on to someone else.

Day 1 will be Saturday November 1st. Until then, practice :-).

I’ll start a list here of some sample acts of kindness, just to get your creative kindness juices flowing.

I wrote this post 5 days ago but wasn’t ready to publish. Wasn’t sure why.

I figured it out today.

Here is that original post:

Today was a challenge.

As I typed the word ‘challenge’ I immediately knew what the bigger problem was.

My perception of challenge.

What I intended to write about has evolved.

I was going to share what caused the ‘challenge’ and how I, with persistence overcame the “challenge.”

But that’s not the blog that needs to be written.

If I didn’t perceive a challenge to my Power Up process, there wouldn’t have been one! So simple.

But, isn’t there “objective reality” to contend with you ask? Some challenges exist, whether we perceive them or not!

No. Not true.

We are in complete control of how we CHOOSE to perceive EVERYTHING in OUR own life. Period.

We can choose to see opportunity in disappointment, an adrenaline rush as excitement/anticipation instead of fear or paralysis and challenge as a choice.

It’s all up to what we choose to think and feel.

Furthermore, these challenges of mine this morning represented my choice to put them in motion. I chose to stay up later than usual, making it a “challenge” to rise bright eyed and bushy tail.

And once that happened, all other Power Up activities were affected. There is a cause for every effect. My choice, my cause produced a particular effect.

So if I made another choice, to not be challenged by the outcome of my original choice. I would have saved a lot of time, and my perception would have been different.

This post wasn’t complete. Today, I’m ready to publish because I peeled the onion back another layer…

How can we alter our perceptions? Yes, make better choices. But that seems circular.

We alter our perceptions (output) by diligently monitoring what we put into our head and heart (input.) We have to monitor our feelings and thoughts as we retire at nights. AND, within moments of early morning consciousness, we MUST begin with GRATITUDE.

Try this for a few days and see what happens!

The nights when I go to sleep with the TV on and no particular attention paid to my thoughts and feelings -making sure I drift off with thoughts of gratitude and love, I wake up with ‘tending negative’ feelings and anxieties. If I immediately switch my thoughts to gratitude – to real gratitude, I experience immediate positive impact.

When I don’t, the day is more challenging.

So, the point here is what?

Staying focused is dependent upon perception, which is dependent upon thoughts and feelings which are dependent upon night time and first morning thoughts….of gratitude.

Grab control, be aware and see the connections.

Creating new success habits is NOT easy. It requires your highest and best effort.

Habits are not isolated. They develop over time, with tiny decisions along the way.

Suggestion:

Log your drifting and waking thoughts, see the connection for yourself

Make a commitment to fall asleep and wake up with thoughts of love and gratitude

Be diligent – for 21 days straight, practice this step.

You will have a POWERFUL success habit after taking action with these 3 simple steps.

For as long as I can remember I have been involved in my development in a conscious and deliberate way.

I guess that’s a good thing. It could be a drag at times, believe me.

But as a result of these decades of helping myself and others to change, grow and evolve, I have tried some pretty interesting programs and initiatives.

The latest one combines several such programs and it’s called POWER UP.

I can’t even tell you, mere words can’t capture the excitement in these fingers and in my heart right now!!

This is so cool. It’s perfect. I’ve done versions of this and it is POWERFUL.

POWER UP is all about starting you day..getting up, if you will… with *** P O W E R.***

Let me ask you, what’s the most important hour of your day? And don’t tell me anything about night person, afternoon person and all that stuff!

Just tell me which hour of the day do you think is most important?

Hope you said the first one. Then I don’t have to convince!

It’s really simple, the first hour of the day, your first conscious moments CAN (and often DO) determine the rest of your day. Of course you ALWAYS have the ability to turn things around…but it will take some serious effort.

Start the day with an hour of power and you will continue on that trajectory – it’s a law of physics as well. Takes more energy to change directions than to keep on the same path.

Also, as creatures of habit , we respond with heightened excitement when we begin the day with a predictably powerful hour.

So here are the details of the Power Up Program. Seven Powerful Steps!

For the first hour of the day we have decided at our household to do the following: (you can create your own version of this morning ritual, these are the steps that work for us)

1. To begin the day with gratitude is smart and right. We’re grateful for life, for another day, for yesterday and the more we are aware of this gratitude, the more we will pull into our life those things we honor with our gratitude. With a gracious disposition, we will be sowing what we would like to reap.

2. HYDRATE – first thing! The body has been without water for many hours, it needs it. The digestive system will be thrilled. All functions will operate so much more smoothly!

3. Pray – it’s what we do to remain connected to source. Adjust this to do whatever you do to remain centered and connected.

4. Meditate – whereas praying is us talking to God, meditating – just being silent in the present moment, without even thoughts to distract, permits us to hear back from God.

5. Workout – for all the obvious reasons. We well add longevity and quality to our health, the boys will work off some of their play energy so they can really focus on learning later.

6. Read – The mind is funny this way. It tends to go with what its given. So if you feed it the information you want it to process and apply…it’ll do it! First thing in the morning is an excellent time to give the mind and soul the specific information that will send empowering signals to your emotions. If you don’t, someone one else will fill it with the first thoughts, images and emotions of the day. The first hour is the formative power hour, remember. Would you prefer being in charge of that vital function, – mind control – or have TV, radio, other people take control?

7. Eat – research shows that starting the day with a good healthy breakfast, sets us up for better eating habits the rest of the day and provides the needed fuel for life on the fast lane! Talk while you eat if you’re doing this with family. We want our children to be filled with our love messages first thing in the morning and the last thing at night, at the very least. There are so many other conflicting messages in their world, we had better be competing smart.

So that’s it, the Power Up Program. (PUP)

Try it with us…we’ll be reporting back to you 🙂

Oh and by the way, we’re doing this for 21 days straight, starting Monday October 13th. Join us.

We expect it to be miraculous in its impact!

What changes would you make to the PUP?

Have you tried something like this and what were the results?

What do you think would be the most challenging aspect of the program?

Contact me and let me know if you’re joining the POWER UP Program to create a set of powerful new success habits.

Believe me you will be stunned at the life changing impact. Whatever you’re imagining, times it by a 100!

(Oh…the “we” in my family: husband and two sons 16 and 13 – 20 yr old daughter misses out as she’s not at home!)

This has been revealed again and again. I have trained and coached thousands in this area for over 2+ decades and invariably, those who fail to create a new success habit, fail because they lacked this essential ingredient.

Some have said to me that It’s almost a chicken and egg discussion though. What comes first? The success habit or the discipline to create the success habit?

I don’t want to be philosophical. No need to debate the issue. I’ll just tell you what I found while actually working with people who were attempting to do something new with themselves.

There is tremendous excitement in starting a new approach…like the dating game. It’s so *exciting,* with hormones and chemicals raging, to begin a new relationship that’s filled with hope and connectivity! We begin to visualize dreams being fulfilled and our life becoming perfect.

The same dynamic applies when starting a new program that appears to answer all the known personal self-development needs. There’s great excitement. Commitments are made with the best intentions. Preparations are even made, research and reading is done. And then what happens? After a few days of action, something happens.

Something always does. Life happens – external impacts (which by now we simply should be expecting) and then there are the internal impacts.

Things like:

self doubt

self pity

fear of success/failure

limiting beliefs surface

self sabotage – comes in too many forms to itemize

jealous fits of comparison to others

disorganized thoughts, environment

feelings of inadequacy

un-forgiveness – towards self and others

insecurities

Out of no where – not really – excitement morphs into negative emotions. It happens, or begins to happen to everybody. These culprits are universal and non-discriminating. But yet some people do succeed, don’t they?

The people who succeed at staying on task do something the others do not. They make taking action on this new habit a non-negotiable daily commitment. No matter the thoughts, fears or external impacts, they make a decision to stay on task NO MATTER WHAT.

What does that take? It takes DISCIPLINE.

A disciplined mind knows what to do with negative thoughts and the resulting emotions

A disciplined person understands the power of repeated actions

A disciplined person, through their commitment presses forward NO MATTER WHAT

Chicken and the egg? Not really. A strong case can be made for discipline or a commitment to discipline being the starting point.

A little bit of discipline ( with easy things) can be increased with practice. Just like a weak muscle can be made strong. It takes sets of reps and gradual increase of weights to build good muscle. The same with discipline.

Some suggestions:

Make a commitment to consciously cultivate a disciplined life-style

Identify those areas of your life that you practice some repetitive actions – personal hygiene, eating, travel, entertainment, hobbies, etc – and isolate a few actions to focus on.

Make a decision to create more focused action in a few specific areas for 21 days. (for example, if (:-))you brush your teeth at night and in the morning – create a routine and ONLY brush at a specific time and for a specific length of time)

Do it for 21 days straight ( btw, in DIscipline – the DI stands for DO It!)

As simple as this seems it does work. It’s precisely how I have moved from no discipline to a disciplined life-style. Tons of research, pioneered by Dr. Maxwell Maltz demonstrates the ‘habit in 21 days’ approach.

Change is a challenge. Humans are creatures of habit. So easy is rare. But with a disciplined approach to life, creating a new success habit becomes more fun than frustrating.

Beginning with a commitment to building a disciplined approach to life, you then move on to create new and powerful success habits. That’s the order that works.

Take me up on the suggestion above and begin building your discipline muscle today. Create some rituals, they’re good for you. Spontaneity is so over-rated! 🙂

There’re opportunities for rituals all around you. Choose a few, build that discipline muscle, then you have the required approach for creating success habits.